Terror List and Russia’s Middle East Policy

The absence of Hama and Hezbollah from Russia’s “List of 17” terrorist organizations was been met with charges of hypocrisy, suspicion, and scorn. The omission certainly didn’t sit well with the Israelis or the Americans. The absence of the Kurdish Workers Party even angered Turkey. Such is the problem with the term “terrorism.” Its application is completely relative in relation to national interests, foreign and domestic policy, and cultural and historical factors. Russia has been curt in its explanation. Hamas and Hezbollah weren’t listed because they don’t pose a direct threat to Russia’s national security.Andrei Smirnov doesn’t buy it. Writing for the Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasian Daily Monitor, Smirnov accuses Russia of listing mostly “virtual groups”, groups whose existence can no longer be confirmed. Two of Russia’s top ranked groups, the Supreme Military Council of the Caucasian Mujahideen and the Congress of the Nations of Ichkeria and Dagestan, have not been heard from since 1999. There is question whether the Islamic Party of Turkestan or the Egyptian Al-Ghamia-al-Islamia still exists. Further, Smirnov charges that the list makes one wonder if Russia really knows who they are fighting in the North Caucuses since they don’t list the three most active organizations in the region: the Chechen State Defense Council-Majlis-ul-Shura, Dagestani Sharia Jamaat and the North Ossetian Kataib-al-Khoul.In addition, if Russia’s list only includes groups that pose a direct threat to Russia, then how do they explain including the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Toiba or Jamaa al-Islamiya but not the Shura of Iraqi Mujahideen, which claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and execution of Russian diplomats in June. Smirnov goes on to point out more inconsistencies in the Russia terror list.But the real issue is their leaving Hamas and Hezbollah of the list. This is where politics enters the fray. Even though FSB terror chief Yuri Sapunov admitted that Hamas and Hezbollah both “use terrorist methods in their national liberation struggle,” according to the Ekho Moskvy, this statement was omitted from the published interview in Rossiiskaya gazeta though it was in the original Interfax interview. Here is Smirnov’s explanation why Hamas and Hezbollah are absent:

It is not surprising that Hamas and Hezbollah are excluded from the Russian terror list, as the Kremlin is known to be sympathetic towards these organizations. Earlier this year Russian President Vladimir Putin invited Hamas representatives to Moscow to meet Russian officials, while Hezbollah is supported by Syria and Iran, two countries that have close ties with Russia. Nevertheless, Sapunov hinted that the Russian government could add the two groups to the list in the future. He said, “We recognize international terror lists, for example, the lists of the United Nations and the lists of such superpowers as the USA and the European Union. We consider them when we communicate with the special services of various countries.”The Russian authorities do not recognize Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations not only because they believe they pose no threat to Russia, but also because the Kremlin is very angry at Western countries that do not recognize the Chechen rebels as terrorists. During a press conference after the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg in July, Putin crossly said that if Syria and Iran are branded state sponsors of terrorism, then Great Britain should also earn that designation because London refuses to extradite Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakaev to Russia (Newsru.com, July 16).

The Kremlin’s decision to omit Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iraqi insurgency from the list of terrorist organizations sends a clear message that terrorist threats to the West will be recognized only if Western officials recognize the Chechen insurgents as terrorists.

As it stands now, the US State Department List of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) does not list a single Chechen or Caucasian terrorist group. Perhaps a better explanation for certain groups’ absences on Russia list has to do with its policy in the Middle East. According to Pavel Baev, Putin’s Middle East policy has to do with a pragmatic approach to the region that is balanced with ensuring high oil prices and arms sales. Instead of the active role Putin hoped for in nuclear talks with North Korea in 2000, the Kremlin is now much more cautious with the Middle East. Even media coverage of the Hezbollah-Israeli war has been “remarkably balanced.” Writes Baev,

Moscow’s self-confidence is also supported by the assessment of the conflict dynamics in the Middle East that suggest a very probable strengthening of its quietly advanced position in a matter of a few weeks. This position is by no means moral but entirely pragmatic: No international framework for Lebanon could be negotiated without involving Syria; no agreement with the government of Lebanon could be implemented if Hezbollah is not a part of it; no stable arrangement for Gaza could be hammered out against the resistance of Hamas. The Kremlin calculates that it would take a few weeks for Israel to recognize that the spectacular devastation of Southern Lebanon could not significantly weaken the military capabilities and political influence of Hezbollah, much the same way as the full-blown invasion in 1982 did not bring about the destruction of the PLO. Meanwhile, the outrage in the Arab states and the indignation in Europe about the scale of the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe would predictably reach such levels that a ceasefire becomes imperative whatever reservations Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice might state. That is why Moscow was not in the least upset by the failure of the Rome conference last week, where Syria was not represented, expecting that the forum would be reconvened when Washington is forced to swallow its objections against sitting at one table with a representative from Damascus.

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—This item is from two weeks ago and slipped under my radar. The League of United Youth, or LOM has become reality. The September 27 edition of the Moscow Times reported that the coalition, which includes the youth organization Rodina; the Communist Youth League, Red Youth Vanguard; National Bolshevik Party; and the Yabloko youth group Oborona, or Defense, announced its formation.

—This week the Presidium of the Russian Supreme Court nullified its overturning of a lower court’s ban of the National Bolshevik Party, ordering a retrial. NPB spokesman Alexander Averin charged that “the decision was made under pressure from the Kremlin.”

—It sounds like a chill is developing with another of America’s allies on the “war on terror. Mosnews is reporting that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cancelled her stop to Uzbekistan as she visits Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan on October 10 – 13. Mosnews writes:

“The reason of this cancellation was that the United States is concerned over clashes in the Uzbek city of Andijan in May and over the current policy of the Uzbek authorities. [Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, Daniel] Fried said. “We are very concerned over Andijan, not only the very incident but the reaction as well,” he added. Fried said the U.S. administration is worried over other aspects of Uzbek activities, such as “pressure on non-governmental organizations, reduction of exchange programs, the entire atmosphere of fear in the country.”

This still surprises me because it seems that the Uzbek government is doing everything right by U.S. standards. It was reported this week that a Muslim imam, Shavkat Madumarov, died of torture in an Uzbek prison. Madumarov was serving a seven year sentence for ties to Wahhabis. The Uzbek government of course claims that he died of “an HIV infection and anemia.” Um, yeah, right.

—The drama in the Beslan Mothers and Grigorii Grabovoi controversy continues. Lisa Vronskaya provides an interesting analysis of why some of the mothers had gravitated to the cult leader. It seems that the devotion of some of its members is causing a lot of tension within the Mother’s group, causing increased speculation that Grabovoi is really an agent of the Kremlin. I seriously doubt this and just speaks to the tendency to see conspiracy emanating from above to squash the legitimate concerns and complaints from those below.

Vronskaya adds that there is a deep cultural reason why many are willing to accept Grabovoi’s claims:

“Russia has an ancient tradition of belief in the supernatural. Despite the country’s early Christianization, Russians continued to worship pagan gods for centuries. The Soviet regime proclaimed Russia a secular state where all religions were all but outlawed, and ordinary people again turned to mystic and supernatural cults. In the 1990s, ’healers’, albeit widely condemned as charlatans, were allowed to cast their spells on nationwide television.”

It is true that you can open any Russian tabloid and see all sorts of classified ads for a variety of kolduny and koldun’i, znakhari, mystics, soothsayers, palm readers, and “authentic” peasant women who can apply herbs and read chicken bones. Not to mention the popularity of astrological and other supernatural books. And it is also the case that there is a long history of religious sects in Russia. The strangest being the secretive Skoptsy, an odd group that split from the Old Believers and practiced castration as well as other extreme dietary and bodily regulations, about which Professor Laura Engelstein of Yale has written. But to take this particular case to the universal seems a bit much. I maintain that while strange and tragic, it is not hard to see why some of the Beslan Mothers have embraced Grabovoi. He offers them the impossible at a time when they are obviously still in shock.

—The Moscow News is celebrating its 75th Anniversary with an interview with the paper’s former editor, Yakov Lomko. The paper began in 1930, was haulted in 1949 after its editor, Mikhail Borodin was shot, but revived again in 1956. The Moscow News served as only foreign language newspaper published in the Soviet Union. When asked about pressure from the KGB, Lomko has this to say:

“Unlike editors of Russian-language Soviet papers I had a convenient excuse: “The foreign reader will not understand this.” After that they would leave me alone. We had an opportunity to speak about our problems more frankly and openly than Russian-language papers. Neither the Foreign Ministry nor the Central Committee dictated us what to write or censored us. We did not get instructions from the KGB, and had no contacts with them. Everything related to the publishing process was discussed by our editorial board.

The paper never was a “troubadour of ideas of Marxism-Leninism.” In the supplement intended for speeches of party leaders we published Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s story One Day of Ivan Denisovich. All this was “swallowed” by the upper echelons, the main thing was to persuade them. But, of course, to go against the “general line” was impossible. We worked for the interests of our country, trying to get close to common human values, believing this the only way to win the trust of the readers.”

—Probably one of the most important news items of the week is that 13 years ago Russian President Boris Yeltsin sent tanks to break opposition led by Chairman of the Supreme Council Ruslan Khasbulatov and Vice-president Alexander Rutskoi to his dissolving of Parliament and the Russian Constitution. I already pointed out how at the time the NY Times and the Washington Post lauded Yeltsin’s use of the military as progress for Russian “democracy” and “reform.” That being said, I find Nikolay Troitsky’s reflection on the event interesting:

“Early in the morning October 4, 1993 the White House was encircled. What happened next some people still call “execution of the parliament”. It was much talked right after the event, and the talks still continue today, that there was some armed resistance, that “defenders” of the House of the Government allegedly seized too much weapons. There probably were weapons but many witnesses of the events did not see them at all. There was General Makashov (he is now representing the Communist Party in the Parliament) with a Kalashnikov gun and three cartridge belts, but the general never shot.

On the day when the House of the Government was stormed, about one hundred of strange men wearing Cossack caps settled in the windows of the building with double-barreled guns or hunting rifles. The men incurred the inimical fire and spoiled the whole of the interior. At that those who fired the House of the Government did not look better than the “defenders”. Among them there were strong athletic men who jumped out of armored troop-carriers with better weapons and fired the building. Nobody knew where the people came from. It was suggested that they were probably engaged by Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, young Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other bankers who afterwards financed the Yeltsin Family. It is astonishing that 12 years after the events, Mikhail Khodorkovsky himself arrived at the parliamentary republic ideas that pushed Khasbulatov and Co.

The storm of the White House was in fact the mixture of senseless outrage and obvious sloppiness. Majority of people sitting in the building – clerks, cleaners, barkeepers – were rather peaceful and did not want to fight the regime. But none of them was allowed to leave the building. Instead, firing of the building began without warning.”

Troitsky ends hid discussion with this lesson of the 1993 “civil war”: “that it is dangerous in Russia to take armed people out in the streets to fight the regime.”

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You haven’t seen Moscow until you’ve taken the metro. Despite its need for modernization, the system is flawless. You can be almost anywhere in the city in 45 minutes. The stations are palaces. The metro is such a part of Moscow culture and aesthetics it is hard to imagine going there and not take it. Not so, however, for many government officials and Novye russkye who have taken to car culture to avoid the swarthy hordes that dwell underground.

Moscow Times editor Mark Teeter tells us that the descent into Moscow’s underworld can cause surprise even shock to these officials and New Russians. Take the chairman of the Federation Council, Sergei Mironov for example, who one day decided to ditch his limo for a ride on the wild side of Moscow life. According to the Izvestia article Teeter cites, Mironov was

“shocked — shocked! — to discover that the metro was “overused.” The trip had not been at rush hour, yet a short ride on the dark blue line proved “more than enough” for the chairman to get the picture. “You get pressed up against the wall, and people tromp on your feet, not noticing that you’re the chairman of the Federation Council.”

Not noticing that you are the chairman of the Federation Council! Oh my word! How could such ingrates not know that!? I mean the Federation Council is such an important office in Russia . . .it provides council to the Federation . . . it . . . what the hell does it do again!?

I mean sweet mother of Jesus. As Teeter rightly notes, the real point of all this is elsewhere. “The first, clearly, is that Mironov could be shocked by what he saw — as good an illustration as you’ll find of the disconnect between government and governed. Being in power means never having to use the subway (among other things) ever again — and forgetting entirely what it is like.”

His follow up point is much more telling,

“Which is a shame, as the metro provides a sobering and invaluable sense of context. In a city chock full of pretend institutions — a pretend parliament, a pretend judiciary and now the Public Chamber, a great big pretend NGO — the Moscow metro is utterly real. It does a real job under really difficult circumstances and does it, for the most part, really well. And it has real problems, too, one of which is the second point here. Mironov correctly observed that the metro is overcrowded; what he didn’t observe (or admit to observing) is that in the view of many users it is overcrowded by the wrong crowd.” [Emphasis mine]

Yes the metro is overcrowded by the “wrong crowd” and this makes it a microcosm for how Moscow is divided by race/ethnicity and class. One of the things I noticed there is how there are virtually no old people in the center of the city. The humpbacked babushka, the symbol for the downtrodden of post-Soviet Russia, has been relegated the outskirts, only to pass the through the center by metro car or perekhod. After all, there is nothing for them in the center, and Luzhkov’s kiosk crackdown has made it harder for them to sell goods around the metro entrances. They rarely see the light until they are outside the kol’tso. The same could be said for Russia’s ethnic minorities. They have to pass through militsia document checks come above ground in the center. The only reason why Russia’s immigrant workers from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan find themselves in the center is as cheap labor for its hundreds of construction sites. Besides that they better not venture closer than Tyeplyi stan. It seems, the only unwashed beasts that get a free pass are the packs of stray dogs, who not only use the metro for transporation, but use it so well that they show the uncanny ability to perekhod!

But seriously, Moscow cannot be understood without taking the metro into large account. And Teeter’s conclusion is right on in this respect:

“The metro is not a metaphor for Moscow, the metro is Moscow, its present and its future. It is a permanent flash point, the no man’s land between two wary and untrusting cultures, a zone both must use every day and at close quarters. In it you see the great ethnic-nationality problem as it appears in real life: not the “swarth-enhanced” actors of the Rodina ad (throwing watermelon rinds in front of baby carriages) but many kinds of people trying to get around the city to make a living, all forced to do so in an ever-increasing proximity and at a rising level of discomfort.

Instead of closing down NGOs, State Duma deputies should each take a weekly subway ride and then strike a real blow for civil society by rendering the city’s underground society more civil: With more trains, more stations and more personnel in the system, its long-suffering, harried passengers would be more likely to tolerate each other better — first inside the metro and then above ground, in the Moscow the Duma members actually do see. And the Duma members would win, too. One reason Boris Yeltsin became a genuine popular hero here in the late 1980s was that people saw him coping as they did: “He takes the bus to work.” Has any Russian politician done the equivalent since — or even thought of it?”

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The execution by hanging of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein reverberates beyond the civil war in Iraq or even American imperial politics. Praise, unease, and criticism has come from all over the world, including opinions about what the execution symbolizes about the war, America’s role, and the possible future impact it might have for the teetering Iraqi state. Russia has been one such place that has offered its views. So here I want to point to what some Russian commentators are saying about the execution. Before I do that I want to provide some general context and comments about the execution and its aftermath.

The trial of Saddam Hussein was one of the few things the Bush Administration could claim as a success of the Iraq debacle. Making the “Butcher of Baghdad” accountable to his crimes is undisputedly a good thing. But the trial was flawed from the start as the Americans had to balance imperial rule with colonial sovereignty. The desired conviction of Hussein came with a price. The limits of America’s ability to re-forge Iraq into even a nascent shadow of itself proved daunting as the trial quickly became a microcosm for sectarian strife. No one would have imagined even two years ago that a “turning point” such as the capture and trial of Saddam Hussein might signal a turning point of a different sort; one that could ultimately be to the Untied States’ detriment.

The taunting that Hussein endured before and at the scaffold has proved an embarrassment for the United States. So much so, that it has distanced itself from the hanging with statements that it tried to delay it. In a news conference in Baghdad, US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell told reporters, “Had we been physically in charge at that point we would have done things differently.” Adding, “At this point the government of Iraq has the opportunity to take advantage of what has occurred and really reach out now in an attempt to bring more people back into the political process and bring the Sunnis back.”

No such luck. For many Sunnis, Hussein’s execution only proves what they already suspected of the Shia controlled government—that it is a state where the Shia majority seeks to exact revenge on the Sunni minority. The al-Maliki government is also embarrassed and is now investigating the abuse. The guards were Sadrists, who chanted the name of their populist Shia leader, Muqtada al-Sadr just before Hussein hang.

It now appears that one of the prison guards was arrested for making the grisly cell phone video of the hanging. However, some are claiming that Iraqi National Security Advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie was the one holding the phone. In all, Hussein’s calling the whole scene the “gallows of shame” rings eerily appropriate.

Shame is the same word Christopher Hitchens, who supported the invasion of Iraq used in a commentary on Slate.Far from bringing anything like “closure,” he wrote, “the hanging ensures that the poison of Saddamism will stay in the Iraqi bloodstream, mingling with other related infections such as confessional fanaticism and the sort of video sadism that has until now been the prerogative of al-Qaida’s dehumanized ghouls. We have helped to officiate at a human sacrifice. For shame.

Hitchens is correct to point to the American’s complicity but unfortunately his move to political morality is overshadowed by his Orientalism.His usage of biological vocabulary–“bloodstream,” “infections,”—suggests that an Iraqi civil society is foul’s gold since the “Iraqi” are of a lesser species.

That said, many are wondering whether Hussein has become exactly the opposite of what his hanging was supposed to be. Instead of becoming a means of reconciliation, he has become a martyr, an image that he himself cultivated as he stood calmly, yet defiantly, with a noose around his neck.

In regard to Russia’s views on the event, it should first be stated that Russia opposed the United States’ invasion of Iraq from the beginning and there is no doubt that every failure on the part of the Bush Administration has been an opportunity for Russian officials and pundits to lob criticism. Russian views on Hussein’s execution prove no different in this regard.

It is true that when it comes to human rights, Russia has few legs to stand on. A quick rebuttal would be to remind Russia that the pot is black too. The violence, torture, and treatment of the Chechens parallels Iraq, though not equal in scope of death or devastation. Tit for tat gets one nowhere especially since the list of “tits” is as endless as the “tats”.The truth of the matter is that Russia is the nearest geopolitical power in the region.It is both a partner and an adversary in the Great Game. This makes it important to review how the Hussein hanging is being viewed in Russia.

Even before the execution Russian political analysts were warning that it could increase inter-religious tensions and violence in Iraq. In an opinion for RIA Novosti, Russian law professor Mikhail Barshchevsky argued that any verdict by the Iraqi courts could be questioned because they were not independent from either the al-Maliki government or the American occupying forces. Hussein’s execution could make him a martyr that could be exploited by the insurgency and could lead to an increase in the violence.

Another commentator for RIA Novosti, Marianna Belenkaya, drew similar conclusions. While all nationalities in Iraq can celebrate the end of a bloody dictator, the execution, she maintains, “has left a bitter aftertaste.” “The situation,” she adds, “reminds me of the recent death of another dictator, Augusto Pinochet, who, although charged with crimes against humanity, was never tried. The trial was called off because of the dictator’s old age. When he died, hundreds of his opponents said they were sorry Pinochet had died without a trial and a sentence. They wanted a legal punishment rather than his death. Unlike Pinochet, Hussein was sentenced to death, yet not all of his crimes have been proven in court.”

Writing in Izvestia, columnist Maksim Iusin asks why Hussein was tried for a crime he was least known for—the revenge killing of 148 inhabitants of Dujail in 1982 following a failed assassination attempt on his life. “It turns out,” Iusin writes, “that the most horrific crimes of Saddam’s regime remain in the shadows. No one carries any kind of responsibility for them. A “Nuremburg Trial” of the dictatorship did not happen.” In the end he argues that the Americans chose the crime that was easiest to ensure conviction. It also allowed American complicity in Hussein’s regime to also be left in the shadows.

In a statement after the hanging, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mikhail Kamynin told reporters, “The situation in Iraq is heading into a worst-case scenario. The country is slipping into violence and is on the verge of a large-scale civil conflict. Saddam Hussein’s death can further aggravate the military-political situation and increase ethnic and religious tensions.”

And finally, Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s LDRP staged a minor protest in front of the Iraqi embassy in Moscow to oppose the execution. Forty four people attended to the demonstration, which wasn’t sanctioned by the police and no one was arrested.

These views are par for the course in that they echo much of what everyone outside of Russia is already saying. Still, there is something being said in Barshchevsky’s and Belenkaya’s commentaries that is different from the rest. Interestingly, both made the same conclusion as to the symbolism of Hussein’s trial and execution. Both argued that they were important signal to heads of state, “a warning that sooner or later they will be called to account for their actions. Nobody will get away with crimes like the ones for which Saddam was tried. Heads of state are not immune and will have to answer for their deeds.”

This all sounds good but I can’t help seeing such a view as hopelessly na?ve. Hussein is hardly the last villain to torture their own population. Nor should Hussein’s trial and execution be seen as a product of any international consensus. The fact that Hussein was tried in Iraq and not in the Hague like Slobodan Milosevic suggests that either there was no international outcry over Hussein or the Americans and their Iraqi puppets wanted to stage manage the trial to their own political benefit. It seems that on this last point Hussein has had the last laugh.

The view that Hussein’s conviction says that the world will hold dictators accountable also masks America’s role in all this. After all, Europe stood and watched ethnic cleansing and murder in the former Yugoslavia until the Americans got involved. No one cared about Rwanda just like there is little real concern about Darfur. One should point out that Pinochet, a US ally, though tried did not get similar and arguably deserved treatment. Finally it is highly unlikely that George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield will ever be held accountable for Iraq. Just like Yeltsin or Putin will never pay for Chechnya.

It is possible to imagine that if Hussein didn’t fall out of the favor with the US, he would have died a natural death. That is, if his own population didn’t rise against him first. No, the trial of Saddam Hussein is a message for sure, but not as Barshchevsky and Belenkaya suggest. It shows that human rights and being held responsible for their violation are politically conditioned. Their enforcement only involves lip service to Enlightenment notions and not their practice. If the trail and execution of Saddam Hussein is any indication, accountability for violating human rights has been made a farce altogether.